3/29 audio pop Law and Order

[dhausman]

I am hearing some audio popping during law and order on 3/29 I am using a motorola dvr box with Adelphia cable out of Granville. Did anyone else notice any audio issues?

[DublinDoodah]

Yeah, I noticed it too.

[NBC4ENG]

The pops you heard came from our Nielson watermark encoder. It is now offline. A trip back to the factory is in order.

[dhausman]

West wing last night sounded fine, did you have backup hardware?

-Dan

[NBC4ENG]

No backups available for this stuff.

[zelig2]

That looks like an interesting device. It adds a watermark to the audio stream to add Neilson data. How does this work for them? They add the watermark but when do they ever see it again? Does it interact with the select few viewers that are part of the Neilson Ratings system?

[NBC4ENG]

Apparently they have a dedicated site in Columbus that receives off us off air. They can tell all kinds of info by calling up that site. This is a check on us. During normal operations, those viewers that have the Nielson decoders in their homes, are furnishing the viewing habits automatically to Nielson. No more paper books. So for ratings, these encoders need to work for us, reliably.

[zelig2]

Do these Nielson boxes work at all with DVRs?